The Price
by Nonsuch
Summary: Sarah Williams learns the price of a little boy's joy. ONESHOT. HALLOWEEN FIC. R&R!


**DISCLAIMER: I own nothing except the plot - and the third graders.**

Sarah panicked, cursing under her breath when she heard the door bell ring; she shouted down the stairs "I'm coming!" She finished yanking on her tights in a rush underneath her long, black skirt and fixed a dyed sheet that doubled for a cape around her shoulders before completing the image with a wonky witch's hat to top the look off.

She run clumsily down the stairs, one hand clasping the hat to her head, and yelled back to Toby, "I'll just be a second!" at the sound of him calling out to her from his room. She hated moments like that. Door bells, Merlin barking furiously from the lounge and the radio buzzing away in the background was all overshadowed by her kid brother whining for help with the act of draping himself with a white sheet.

Still, Sarah couldn't say she hadn't known what to expect. She'd sat with Toby too many times to be truly affected by his whines unless she thought they were something serious. Her dad and Karen were out, meeting with a client and she'd been dealt baby sitting duties. Such meetings weren't one offs in the Williams household; they were regular missions to be completed diligently, and involved sweet-talking clients into handing over custody of their cash. Toby hated it more than Sarah, he would fume and throw tantrums when he saw his parents trying to leave and wrap his arms around their legs and wail in a vain effort to make them stay.

It didn't help that Toby was never grateful for all her help, for all the love she gave him to try and compensate for how his parent's love was all too rarely shown. He had no idea how much she loved him, couldn't comprehend what she knew she would do to save him if he ever needed saving. It hurt Sarah that he never said thank-you or asked for things nicely – he was always rude and hurtful, resentful of the attention his parent's paid to his seventeen year old sister despite how unrestrainedly she adored him. It made all her fussing seem pointless - discredited every act of kindness as undeserved attention that only acted to make a spoiled child worse.

She reached the door in a puffy fluster, her heart thudding insistently against her chest as she reached for the handle, anticipating the sight of a gaggle of costumed children as they would chorus 'Trick-or-Treat' and beg like puppy dogs for sweets.

She froze just as she was ready to turn the handle, "oh shit!" She ran into the kitchen and snatched a bag of boldly packaged lolly-pops. Prepared, and with one final adjustment to her hat; Sarah opened the door, smiling warmly.

The first fact that registered was that she was not faced with a group of seven year olds in sweet little dress up kits, instead, a man dressed in some kind of armour that was so alien she could barely pick it out from the dark and a shining, luminescent cloak that whipped around in the wind. He smiled at her - a soft, coaxing smile.

Sarah slammed the door, a bulging bag of sweets falling with a thud to the floor.

She took deep, soothing breaths, counted to ten and blocked out Toby's irritating squawking from upstairs. Then, she opened the door. The scenery hadn't changed.

She calmly attempted to shut it, but a booted foot was placed swiftly over the threshold before it could be safely shut.

"How rude," he raised an eyebrow as he assessed her, his eyes working their way from the tip of her hat down to her newly polished shoes. Sarah shot out an arm to her left, grabbing at a plastic broomstick and held it threateningly as he spoke on smoothly overlooking her battle stance, "and I thought you to be a polite girl Sarah. I see I must have been mistaken." He took another step closer, the foot passing over the doorway as the other remained on the steps.

"You, you're not real," she shook her head, over and over again as if persistent denial would wipe him off the face of the earth. It took thirty seconds for Sarah to figure what a total fool she must have looked stood there in a witch's hat bearing a broom and shaking her head mechanically like a clock work toy.

"Aren't I? A non-existent man does not breathe Sarah, he does not lust for what it is he has lost or have the sense to act on his own behalf." She could pick up a trace of amusement in his tone, her heart sped up – striking frantically until it was painful to consider exactly what his words meant beyond that they proved undeniably that he was _real._

She had barely opened her mouth to speak back when a long, leather encased finger was pressed against her lips. She saw him smirk at how her whole body shook and the broomstick dropped uselessly from her hands as her grip fell away. "Hush dear. I only wished to ask you one question, a tiny, little thing." He slowly removed his finger, allowing Sarah to breathe again and regain some slight element of perspective, some room to consider just what the presence of the Goblin King in her front door meant.

She considered how she feared for Toby, her awareness of him heightened by the persistent buzzing of his distant voice in her ears - God she felt afraid. She had told herself it had all been a dream. Told herself that the man with his hot breath in her face and his finger on her lips wasn't real when she had woken up in a perfectly tidy room after hosting the world's craziest party the night before. She had told herself it couldn't have been real, that it had all been impossible, that it was all just some scarily authentic dream - the product of a ridiculously over-active imagination. She had told herself over and over again she was safe, that Toby was safe, as she would bury her head in her pillow to escape nightmares of the Goblin King.

Sarah had lived under that illusion for three years, and seeing her neat, orderly picture of the world crumble down before her was too damn much for a night were she'd spent an hour fixing on useless acrylic nails in the bathroom and chasing constantly after her brother as he would hide with no other intent in his mind except for maximum irritation of his sister.

She was close to gibbering; to chattering madly like a monkey and handing herself over to a mental home when she woke up the next morning with not a trace of proof in the house to prove anything she was living through had actually happened. But instead she took one more of those deep, soothing breathes and spoke in a clear, collected voice, "what question?"

Sarah was caught in a substitute for reality, in a world she could understand compromising of her, Toby, the Goblin King and the house. Her logic omitted the garden path, the stairs, and consequently ignored a close knit huddle of third graders stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching the scene in the doorway play out with their curiosity piqued by the sight of a man dressed in the most impressive costume any of them had ever seen.

Sarah simply stared glassy eyed out into space as the Goblin King spoke, he didn't appear to care about the children, even as a little girl with a cat mask and acrylic whiskers wandered forward, crept quietly up the stairs cringing each time they creaked, and reached out for his cloak, her fingers brushing against the fine, luxuriant fur. The girl froze as he spoke, his words close to nonsensical as he spoke as innocently as a child, "why trick-or-treat of course."

"What?" Her voice was vague, dream-like as she challenged him. She couldn't help but ponder whether it was possible she was speaking to an average snub nosed trick-or-treater who her mind was somehow seeing as a canine teethed demon King. She prayed vainly that it was all a dream, prayed that she'd wake up and find herself back to the morning all over again to live out an ordinary, humdrum day.

"It's a simple question. Though I will say it again, trick-or-treat?" The other children approached him, creeping up the stairs, attracted like metal filings to a magnet. They were unavoidably drawn to him and the power that emanated off him like a glow that lit the darkened street.

Sarah continued to be caught in a state of prolonged shock that dissipated as time gave her a chance to adjust to what it was she was facing. Her voice was quiet, but stronger than it had been before as she raised her eyes to him with a steeled glare. "You aren't getting any treats from me Goblin King."

"Oh, aren't I?" He took a step closer, his voice dangerous and his cloak dragging across the threshold as he backed Sarah against the wall. Her hall was knocked off, falling to the floor freeing her entire face to his vision. He reached up a finger, drew it across the rosy skin of her cheek and watched in fascination as it blanched.

The children watched from the doorway, utterly captivated by the prospect of whatever, poison-like words would drip from his mouth next. One boy chewed idly on his gum, and swallowed it without thinking, choking before it slithered down his throat, when he saw the Goblin King's arms fold around the recoiling figure of a girl and draw her into a death-lock of an embrace.

"No." Her voice was a squeak, she was terrified, frightened by what he could do, by how he made her body quiver with a feeling she couldn't understand. It wasn't love, it wasn't fear, no, it was more like a kind of anticipation, a wicked desire to see what he would do next with his body crushed against her despite knowing he could do things to her that would make her hate him forever and a day. She could remember his longing looks, how his voice would become low and sultry as he would address her and she would stubbornly stand her ground, all words and actions she had dismissed as a dream. But the look in his eyes as he stared at her fixatedly, his eyes inches away, the way he squeezed her in some disturbed manipulation of an embrace, was something far worse.

The Goblin King studied her, saw her face contort as her ears picked up on the sound of a child calling tersely down the stairs, "tell me Sarah, do you hear a child call?" Sarah heard Toby cry out again; his voice rang as loud and clear as a bell around the hall. Toby's all too familiar yell was commanding her to come.

She tried to pull away, called up, "I'm coming Tobes! Just give me a minute!" She flashed her head towards the Goblin King, implored him with her eyes for pity but he observed her coldly as she squirmed violently in his embrace, "Please, let me go – let me go to him. He must be scared-"

"Yes. He must mustn't he? Can you hear him still Sarah?" She listened anxiously. There wasn't a voice anymore; there were no words, just a whimper - the soft sound of a child crying alone in their room. It was as if all the other sounds, the sound of Merlin padding around the lounge, the radio on in the kitchen – they were numbed leaving only the sound of pathetic child's cries unceasingly being cried into her ear. It tortured her to tears that slivered down her face.

"Please, please – if you can't let me go, make him stop, make the crying stop. _Please_."

"May I take something in return?" His voice was cold, remote – business like.

"Anything, please, just make him _happy_." She choked the words out, dreaded the future because of how all the excitement, the thrill of her magical fairy-tale world being handed back had been darkened by her little brother's terror.

The children watched on, enchanted by the show, by every lithe movement of his body and the terrible, stilted dance that played out between the King and the girl like a performance put on especially for them. They watched as he moved his head forward, as his lips parted and pressed his to hers, indulging in a long, passionate kiss taken through her cold, quivering lips. Most of the boys would have feigned nausea and jeered at them in disgust, the girls would have twittered on about how beautifully romantic a scene they made together. But they all stood struck to silence as they parted and the Goblin King took a pale, bloodless hand and led her limp, wordlessly obedient body away from the room and out through the door into the star speckled night.

The children ran to the door, pin pricks of light pressed onto their palms from where they had held onto a cloak scattered freely with pin-pricks of light sifted from a star. They screwed their eyes up in concentration to try and make out two shadows moving down the path. But there was nothing to see except for a crowd of kids across the street, cheerfully comparing what they'd been given as they moved on to the next door.

They heard a noise from up the stairs, the sound of small feet padding along the floor and approaching the stairs. They all looked at each other, returned to the reality that they were in a stranger's house where they had seen something incredible they would never be able to explain.

They ran out quickly, scattered on the street returning home to the safety of their own beds and their parent's soft, soothing words as they told of what they'd seen. That night, all of them had a nightmare – all of them saw a girl in a large, stone room crying unceasingly into her hands as she was peppered with kisses from cold, alien lips. They were all plagued with terrible, wretched guilt for how they had stood quietly by and watched her be tricked into being snatched from everything she knew, everything she loved. But the guilt, the worry faded as time ticked by and every memory was systematically disregarded as a dream.

The door, left wide open by everyone who had left through it, creaked to a close with no one there to push it as soon as the last child had left.

Toby padded down the stairs a minute after the door had clicked to a close, stepping carefully because he was draped in a sheet that dragged against the carpet. His mother called out to him from the kitchen, told him to get ready to go as he smiled a wide, contented smile as he thought of the wonderful fun they would have - he and his mother, together for the entire evening, with there not a single reason for her to focus her attention on anyone other than him.

There had never been a happier little boy in the world as he walked hand in hand out of the door with his mother.

* * *

Hello all, this is my offering for Halloween, written in an hour (or two...) and I apologise profusely if there are any errors etc. I just had an idea all of a sudden and had to write it and get it down in time for Halloween.

This was originally supposed to be funny, to alleviate the general 'angst-huge angst-mega angst' pattern my stuff's been following lately. This somehow slipped into the third of the afore-mentioned catergories, God, from what I write anyone would think I wore thick eyeliner, lamented existence and listened to Evanescence songs on an endless loop.

And no, Jareth isn't a vampire. Sarah's more bloodless from the shock, and I just love including the obligatory 'his touch is COLD!' reference, it's probably by inner goth.

Anyway, enjoy, REVIEW and happy Halloween guys! xxx


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